An ember dies

[Temp 2006]

The wind took on a very sudden and very sharp rise, causing the man's ears to ring. He could feel himself falling, hair momentarily shifting in the breeze. He'd simply lost his footing, backpedaled when he should have stepped aside and in doing so, found only loosely set stones beneath his heels. He peeled back over the edge of a sudden drop. The man came into contact, first, with a limb sized branch. It easily giving to his weight before splintering into several pieces in his descent. Second, the man met the sheer drop's near barren walls thrice before meeting the cliff's bottom with an echoed thud. He simply lay there, for hours, staring up at the starless sky, his figure bruised and near broken. The man's eyes growing heavy, he blinks only to open his eyes to a new setting.

A large room, beneath the earth, several teal banners baring a circular serpent marking its walls. The wounded man looked on in horror as many he'd called brother and friend lie about the room in pieces, a duo standing before him. The bloodied of the two, looked on at Gansen, disbelief clear on his face. The man's expression sagged into regret before he turned a bloodied blade inward on himself, the phrase, "Alone or as one," escaping his lips for the last time. Gansem stepped into the room, his right hand outreached, begging for forgiveness but before he'd even had the chance to approach the man, he found himself surrounded by aged scrolls and half-written books. His head barren, Gansem looked on in quiet contemplation as a giant of a man gave quiet lesson to several men stood about a pyre. The words muffled and distant, Gansem strides across the mighty halls of the owynist church, plate and chain rattling about his being, maul grasped just before its head in his right hand. He'd open his mouth to speak but before he can allow the passage of words, he finds himself in darkness, a great weight upon his being.

The man frantically pulls himself from rubble, shouts of "The king is dead! Find the prince!" seeping through the sunken walls of a fallen palace. Freeing himself, Gansem stumbles across the remnants in desperation before ascending to a set of inner doors. His figure battered, the man drives hard at the door, shoulder first and knocks it free of its hinges. He staggers forward and falls unto his chest, fatigue clear in his being. As he places his palms to the now snow covered fields of a land he once called home, the panicked agonized screams of a man lost to his senses ring out over him. He looks on in quiet horror and shame as a man he'd known as friend was beset upon by all manner of undying abomination. A simple raid gone wrong, the man attempts to bring himself into a rise, only to find an iron boot meeting his ribs. Arms wrapped about his torso, he looks on in agony as he finds himself in a field. Just as his senses come to, a colossal creature drives down, hard, at his head with a stone device of war in its palms. Unable to react, the man simply closes his eyes and whispers to himself, "Alone or as one," before letting out his last.

[Paleo 298]

Moved to The Great Library. It shall be sorted into the appropriate category shortly.

 

If you feel this is a mistake, please contact myself or any FM and we'll restore it.